More Changes than Not

Things at the Howe Home transitioned over the weekend to totally unrecognizeable!
I am sure many of you know how much work it takes to prep a house for demo and how quickly it all happens! Which is why the place looks the way it does now!
So, because so much has happened since the last update, I'll walk you through step-by-step of our progress. When I last left you, we still had carpet, and I was awaiting 'demo' day.

Here's what the downstairs looks like without carpet: Notice how the wainscoting still lives!

The carpet came up really easily! I think it's funny that the subfloor is almost the same colour as what the carpet used to be!

Chris named the newest member of our family Oscar! You wouldn't imagine everything that was coming out of the carpet as we were lifting it up off the floor and throwing it into Oscar: dead insects, old popcorn, pins, staples, and small kittens. The carpet looks more content in its' new location though:

Enter Phase 2 of the Demo:

Wainscoting, meet floor. Floor, meet wainscoting.

Although we realise that there was a trend toward keeping the wainscoting, for more reasons than not, we all decided that the wainscoting should go. We are REALLY excited about how much brighter it looks. If, in the future we want to put new wainscoting up, it'll be a piece of cake to do so.

We are still unsure whether or not the walls miss their intimate relationship with their more temporary counterparts. Only time will tell!

And thennnn, get this, Phase 3! The linoleum in the kitchen!

 

Yes, we do have a green kitchen. Get over it :) It used to be pink!

At this point, we are linoleum, carpet, and wainscoting - less. The next step is to prep for painting and laying down the floor. As we also all know, prep takes longer than anything else. Dad was working the other night on pulling out a piece of rotten floorboard that had some water damage.

Since then, we've been able to TSP, fill all of the holes and started to sand. We'll be starting on securing down the floor (which is still creeky because it is just nailed down) with screws in the next couple days as well.

In other news, Chris is back for a bit! He has come in handy already!:

Notice the nimbleness of his feet!

Today the boys were also seriously discussing how to move the 200 + lb boat motor from its home for the last 7 years. We are going to try and get it going with all of the company we have coming this summer!

 

Tackling the disaster that is upstairs together today.

And, to cap it all off, some serenity in all of this madness.